I'm on Mars and Twitter… whoop-dee-fricken-doo.

@SarcasticRover Wins Shorty Award for “Best #NonHuman”!

(APRIL 9th, 2013)

Last night, the 5th Annual Shorty Awards were held at the Times Center in New York City. Honouring the best in Twitter and social media from around the world, The Shorty Awards are known as ‘The Oscars of Social Media’, and feature dozens of categories, celebrity hosts, presenters, and winners that have included Ricky Gervais, Conan O’Brien, Justin Bieber, and Jimmy Kimmel.

Among the award recipients last night was the parody Twitter account @SarcasticRover – created and written by Calgary screenwriter Jason Filiatrault – who won the Shorty Award for the category of “Best NonHuman”, beating out two dogs, three cats, and an alien.

Though unable to attend the ceremony in person, an acceptance speech from Filiatrault was played before the audience in New York, and online to his more than 100,000 followers.

@SarcasticRover is a parody account of the Mars rover Curiosity and was started back in August, 2012 when Curiosity touched down on the surface of Mars. Since then, the account has grown steadily – even attracting the attention of NASA engineers, astronomers, bloggers, and celebrities including Bill Nye “The Science Guy”, Rainn Wilson from ‘The Office’, and Star Trek Voyager’s Jeri Ryan. The account still updates daily with jokes about science, astronomy, and pop-culture – all told from the eyes of a bitter robot trapped on Mars.

Last night’s awards were hosted by actress Felicia Day, began with a special video from New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, and featured guests such as as Wolf Blitzer, Seth Green, Miss Teen USA, and even the real Mars Curiosity Rover. Other winners at the awards included first lady Michelle Obama, Jimmy Kimmel, CNN, Comedy Central, Selena Gomez, and Canadian astronaut Commander Chris Hadfield.

You can read more about the event (including @SarcasticRover’s acceptance speech), and about the Shorty Awards at the following links: